Georgia Hoareau
Oh Well……….
From the Gold Coast of Australia comes Georgia Hoareau and her fourth single, “Oh Well." She’s just 18, but has one of those voices that makes her sound like an old soul (in a good way). No wonder she’s been able to work with veteran Aussie producer Joel Myles on her releases - and it sounds like they’ve got a great thing going. Here’s our review of the track.
Track starts with the band all-in and the main riff vocalized with backing from a fuzzed out guitar, then we hit the first verse where we get a taste of Georgia’s powerful alto over a nice set of chord changes and a half-time feel. Lyrically she sets the stage for what has happened in the past year, and Myles does a great job of keeping the focus on her voice and the story. The bulk of the instrumentation drops out until we get to the last few bars before the chorus where the intensity starts to pick up again to launch us into the chorus. Through the first two sections of this song we can tell that this production and song is on par with anything busting through on terrestrial radio today. Love the interplay between the live instruments and digital. Great guitar tones and compression on the drums - eq is solid all throughout the mix.
First chorus has a full on concert energy and we realize she’s talking about a breakup with a shrug, “oh well.” Energy and storytelling is solid here - if not a little reserved for what is to come. There’s a very unique 6 bar interlude between the chorus and second verse that we absolutely dig because it catches us off guard when we would have expected the verse to either start right away, or come in after four or eight bars. We love that! Anything to keep us guessing is great!
Second verse picks up the intensity and has some great effects on the BG’s on the “rollercoaster” phrase that really accentuate that phrase. Then we’re back into the chorus again where our favorite part has to be that major 6th melodic jump. Very cool. Very unique. We also need to say how much we appreciate the descriptiveness of her lyrics - it would be too easy to throw in some basic, boring lines that we’ve all heard about breakups, but she keeps it conversational, and it’s solid. Now that we’ve heard that head riff again before the outro, we can definitely see it in a major concert setting. Love the way the song ends too, she knows she’s on her own and can’t go back and she’s cool with it - and that’s that - that’s where the track ends. Love it!
Make sure you scroll down to check out her socials and other tracks. “17” shows how intimate her vocals can be, and once again features how she can take a conversational approach to her lyrics - it’s a powerful track. “Girl” has had over 30K spins (also produced by Myles) and could be considered the pre-curser to the song we just reviewed. Tonally, she reminds us a bit of Adele as well as Billie in this track. We look forward to what she’ll be doing next, with such a strong start in these first four songs she’s bound to do great things.